I feel as though my creative diet lately has consisted too much of science fiction lately, so I decided to delve into some (relatively) local horror. In 2011, a bunch of people got together, crowd funded a film, and released it via BitTorrent, and other means.
With a budget of only $135,000 and a run time of 90 minutes, shot over something like 2 weeks, that's about $10k a day for production costs. Probably less than that, given the editing process would have taken longer than that.
For a film that is set in derelict tunnels below a major Australian city, filmed over several days, there's impressive continuity between scenes.
The presentation is very convincing, and at first, you'd think you were actually watching a documentary. I liked this realism, and not once was the fourth wall broken along the way.
The story follows an announcement by the Government of New South Wales to reuse train tunnels under the city of Sydney for water recycling. A song and dance is made about this in the media, but then progress and news on the project goes dark. Rumours that homeless people live in the tunnels, and a journalist and her crew set off to investigate.
They investigate with questionable legality, and their story is told entirely through the style of found footage, with the excuse for the cameras being that they're an honest to good TV crew with a story to tell.
Depending on who is holding the camera at any given moment is a representation of how good the footage ends up looking, and it ranges from great to "what on Earth is this", which has the intent of adding to the tension and the horror.
What strikes me most about the film is how unapologetically and authentically Australian this is. It isn't b-grade by any means, but it just has the casual, laid back Aussie spirit quite literally embodied in the early parts of the film - and there's excellent acting going on throughout the feature.
You learn to love the characters (and their flaws) - which makes you care about them as they explore the tunnels and run into... stuff.
The stuff isn't particularly confronting from a horror / psychological thriller sort of perspective, but the classic trope of the unknown carries the story forward.